Category Archives: Movie talk

This is not a review, there are interesting links at the end of the post.
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Twitter, Facebook status messages, I realized, are a good pointers to movie – but at the same time are completely devoid of spoilers. Earlier I inadvertently used to get some hints about movie, but for Inception I did not know ANYTHING about movie except that it was recommended.
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I had pulled along my friend who usually enjoys animated movies ( I am not attracted to animated movies, even though I have enjoyed a few – and he had pulled me along to Despicable Me which was good I must observe) and therefore I was little anxious if this could appeal to him. Thankfully it did.
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This movie for many reasons remind me of The Matrix – especially in those after the movie analysis and different interpretations. Even today, for some reason, I don’t enjoy Matrix 2, 3 as much as the first one. I hope Inception does not come with a trailer – but for all business purposes, the sequel seems inevitable.

The one difference I noted with respect to special effects, Matrix had good fights.
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Finally, regarding the ending. I was convinced that Leo was in real world at the climax, although I respect the doubts – and the reasons for doubts are quite powerful.

I often feel the consumer can be more smarter than the creator. I had this argument with our Sanskrit teacher during my high school – she was very talented and knowledged. At one point I asked her, it could be that she was interpreting better that what the poet himself intended. There was no way to prove. As an extension I even refused to believe Vedas came from God – they could have well been written by knowledged scholars.

Furthermore, with respect to Inception ending, explanation by Dileep Rao is what I like best – he says what was probably in my mind :

The problem for me is that you’re using negative evidence to support a story that isn’t there. I don’t know what to say about a character who only exists before and after the movie. You’re talking about a character who isn’t onscreen. And I mean on one hand, it’s awesome that this movie can sustain that kind of discussion……It’s a mental heuristic failure to think that one or two minor details explain absolutely everything. I mean, kids wear the same clothes all the time.

There, he nailed it. It is this very discomfort that makes me not believe in Karma and all related stuff. I don’t know what to say about what happened before my birth in previous life and I don’t care about next life. It gives me more comfort to just think “kids wear the same clothes all the time” = “stuff happens for no reason”, rather than break my head over meaning behind every thing on earth and beyond. At one level, I doubt myself that kids don’t wear the same clothes all the time, but at a broader level, I can believe in that assumption rather than negative evidence.

Enough of my philosophy, links follow.

Lot of answers attempted.
Inception explained

Dilip Rao’s answers

What a programmer thinks about Inception :

Entering Limbo = Memory Leak. The reference to an object is nullified (the subject’s projection/reference is killed in the dream), so the object is leaked and there is no way to access it, until either a garbage collection happens, or when the parent process is stopped. (i.e. the subject is awaken up).

Inception also understands “Big Oh” ideas — when you are looping inside the third level down, you have 10 seconds on the outside giving you 10^3 seconds on the inside. (EDIT: a single “tick” in one level allows for 20 or so “ticks” at the next level of dreaming, because of extra brain capacity during sleep.)

And I had noted as soon as I finished watching that inception for geeks is kind of recursion.

More programming link

A comic is being said to have had original idea, see for yourself the comparisons.
Comparisons of Inception and the comic

The comic in question above

Infographic showing timelines and layers

One more infographic

For some reason this mashup trailer is liked by many Inception mashup trailer

And finally, not really inception based, but related – a memento type chess game analysis of a game between two grand masters by another:

Why are we talking about Memento in an Opening article? Here is my take on it: in life we make every decision, even the tiniest ones in anticipation of something positive in our future. It is never easy for one to understand if the decision was a success or a failure until you actually see that future. That’s why they say, “In retrospect, your vision is always 20/20!” This principle can easily be applied to the openings we play. You make each decision in your opening hoping to get a better middlegame and eventually a good endgame. This makes openings one of the hardest things in chess, as you will have to see the farthest to understand the implication of each move. The better the player, the better is their understanding and the farther goes their vision. Hence we are going to study our opening from end to start, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento.